I have no wish to sit at their table tonight and listen to Jim wax lyrical about Mark’s attributes and achievements. I have no wish to hear him tell me, again, what a lucky woman I am to have caught Mark. And the thought of playing audience with Karen, fighting to inject myself into the men’s conversation, makes me slump.

‘I barely slept – my head’s all over the place,’ I say to Mark. ‘If you hadn’t pointed this out –’ I gesture towards the label that indicates I’ve put my t-shirt on inside out.

‘You would’ve noticed sooner or later. And that’s not a reason to cancel dinner. Why can’t you sleep anyway? Kids were good last night.’

I take my shirt off, move it about like seaweed in a wave, and put it back on so the label is where it should be.

‘I don’t know. Dad, Christmas, Charlie. Is that enough?’

‘Glad I didn’t hear my name in that list.’ He walks to the end of the bed and gives me a kiss. ‘I won’t be too long.’

It’s strange and unexpected that he’s become so handy in the past year. I’m not sure what sparked it, but the kids are going to help him build a cubbyhouse and that, evidently, involves many runs to the hardware store.

We walk down the hallway, and at the point where we’d take different directions – left and down to the front door, right to the kitchen – he groans. ‘Jojo,’ he says, then steps aside so I can see. Joanne is standing next to Woof and holding a bottle of red food colouring in her alarmingly stained fingers. Woof, mercifully lying on the tiles, a foot away from the carpet, is covered with red blotches.

‘Leopard,’ Joanne says.

‘Ah,’ I reply, thinking that at least she’d remembered something from the documentary on Africa we watched last night.

‘Do you want me to –?’ Mark begins.

‘No, I’ll do it,’ I say.

Only last week, a visiting plumber had commented on Woof’s thick golden coat. And his gait. ‘You could train him up to show standard,’ he’d said. ‘Still young.’ I’d told him I had no time for a hobby, though I was sure Woof appreciated his compliment. The plumber had seemed more offended that I thought showing dogs was a hobby than I was at his suggestion that a mother of three had time for training a dog.

‘Can I have a hand with the sheets?’

‘After the news,’ Mark calls back.

By the time he shows up, I’ve stripped the twins’ beds and ours, and am tucking a clean sheet under Joanne’s mattress.

‘Had to call Geoff,’ he says, picking the pile of discarded sheets off the floor. ‘This is the big one, Abby. This cyclone’s stronger than Wanda. Geoff’s putting the Bureau’s advice out as often as he can get airtime, but none of the other networks are picking up on it.’

I walk to our bedroom and he follows me, throwing the twins’ bedding in the laundry basket, obsessing about the weather as I unfurl a fitted sheet and let it drop onto our mattress like a massive shower cap. I point to the corner of the bed.